The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run film society.
The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a membership-based film society based in Melbourne, Australia.
We hold screenings at ACMI, Fed Square every Wednesday night for most of the year.
Admission is by membership, which can be obtained on a short-term or yearly basis.
We are a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organisation.
7:00pm IN A LONELY PLACE
Nicholas Ray (1950) 93 mins – PG
Ray’s extraordinarily vivid and bitterly romantic Hollywood “valentine” features Humphrey Bogart as a cynical, dangerously violent and failed screenwriter, wrongfully accused of murder, who escapes to the brief idyll of a relationship with neighbour Grahame (who was separating from Ray at the time). Exquisitely shot by Burnett Guffey and based on Dorothy B. Hughes’ brilliantly disturbing novel, this is one Ray’s defining works, a brutally honest and painfully tender portrait of vulnerable, damaged lives and the illusory dreams of old Hollywood. A key film of the 1960s Bogart cult, and for many Grahame’s greatest, most soulful performance.
4K DCP.
CTEQ ANNOTATION
The Heart is a “Lonely” Hunter: On Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place
by Serena Bramble
8:50pm THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Vincente Minnelli (1952) 118 mins – PG
This rise-and-fall tale of an anti-heroic but charismatic producer (Kirk Douglas) is one of the great films about Hollywood, whose tawdriness is revealed and subsumed by Minnelli’s lush but intense visual style. Playfully reworking the form of Citizen Kane, the life of a “great man” is viewed in flashback and from different perspectives. This self-consciously ironic MGM opus alludes to the legends of Hitchcock, Lewton, Welles, Stroheim and, most potently, David O. Selznick. Featuring an appropriately all-star cast including Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Gilbert Roland and Dick Powell, its emotional centre lies in Grahame’s wonderful Oscar-winning performance.
35mm print courtesy of the BFI National Archive.
CTEQ ANNOTATION
Tribute to a Tyrant: The Bad and the Beautiful
by Grace Boschetti
The Melbourne Cinémathèque started out as the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) in 1948 and changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984.
The Melbourne Cinémathèque aims to present films in the medium they were created and as closely as possible to screen films the way they would have originally screened (i.e. big screen, celluloid prints, not video or DVD).
Programmes include a diverse selection of classic and contemporary films showcasing director retrospectives, special guest appearances and thematic series including archival material and new or restored prints.
We have on occasion hosted numerous seminars featuring renowned film scholars such as David Bordwell, Adrian Martin and Ian Christie. We are also dedicated to providing new annotations on the films we screen via the CTEQ annotations, hosted as a part of the quarterly online film journal Senses of Cinema.
The Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered and membership-driven relying on support from individuals, foundations, corporations and government funding to maintain its high standard of excellence. If you would like to be involved, or to offer donations or sponsorship, please contact us.
Presented by The Melbourne Cinémathèque with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Curated by Michael Koller, Adrian Danks, Eloise Ross, Cerise Howard and Andréas Giannopoulos for the Melbourne Cinémathèque
Subtitling Logistics: Lorenzo Rosa
Music Synchronisation: Michael Koller
Supported by VicScreen & RMIT University.
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